the most effective marketing tool is engagement. Because engagement ensures an emotional bond between consumer and brand so that conversations can flow between them about the brand. So all we need is love!

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

In this highly interconnected world the key factor becomes enabling consumers to recommend the brand in their stories. But to do this it is not enough like the product or the brand: it is necessary to love it! Because people only recommends brand they love. The only content that exist is that worth telling.

Some marketers make “content marketing” interchangeable with content-marketing activities like social media. Learn 9 misperceptions that devalue content marketing and its potential for success, and find out how to avoid making them again.

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

All real and worthwhile concepts, these words – perhaps because of their relative newness – tend to be used as blanket terms that describe a laundry list of things. For example, “content marketing” is often used interchangeably with “social media."

Success Stories are great at providing proof, but lousy at Selling. Success Stories are great at providing proof, but lousy at Selling. Here are 6-reasons why, and how you can inspire customers to buy with stories that sell.

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

The problem is that the vast majority of customers at any stage of the sales cycle are not yet sold on why they should change or why they should change through you. These customers are not looking for proof of a solution to a problem they don’t yet think they have. Without a full appreciation of the value of your product, your salespeople will be forced to follow the customer down the road of commoditization and discounting when the customer decides to buy, or no decision when he or she does not decide to buy.

Hashtags, which make it easier to find, share and curate content on social platforms, can be an invaluable tool in your marketing arsenal.

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

A hashtag is the wonder of the past decade. It was born to address the need to organize and make sense of the overwhelming social media buzz. Thanks to active and creative user adoption, hashtag support has been added to most popular social media platforms.

Get tips for using hashtag analysis tools and find out which hashtags to use in order to make sure your tweets get seen by your ideal reader.

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

So you’re all ready to launch a bunch of tweets to promote your newest piece of content. You’ve got a great headline, an awesome image, and a shortened URL. And now… the hashtags. But which hashtags? How many hashtags? Do you really even have to use hashtags? Let’s take a look at the basics of hashtags and discuss best practices for using them wisely.

You can write blog posts, spend six figures on pay-per-click ads, send newsletters, and tweet to your heart’s content. Within these choices are even more micro-choices. What targeting options and images should you pick for your Facebook ads? Should you develop your blog posts in house, or should you outsource the writing to ghostwriters? How do you choose the right email subject headlines? Should you choose a cost-per-click or cost-per-impression pricing model

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

Every marketing strategy should start with your customer base. Who are the people using your product? What do these individuals value, what do they feel, what products are they currently using, and what will it take to sign them on as paying customers?

New changes mean decreased Facebook visibility. What can your small business do? Here are 30 low budget tactics to increase your reach.

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

Where appropriate, you can try to encourage your Facebook community to interact with you on another platform or channel without being promotional or pushy. - See more at: http://heidicohen.com/decreased-facebook- visibility/#sthash.fSPZoAXY.dpuf

In the course of working with brands across the business landscape, a few questions come up time and time again. What is content marketing? Why is it important? Who should care? What should they do about it. It reminds me of the classic journalism approach of answering the who?, what?, when?, where?, why? and how? questions to get to the bottom of every good story. So here is my attempt at answering those basic questions. Who needs to worry about content marketing? Strategic...

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

Content Marketing is the process of continuously publishing content that people want (vs. advertising that attempts to interrupt the content people want) to help connect your brand to its audience. The key words are highlighted: continuous, publishing, customer-focused content that leads to quantifiable brand value.

Luke Kintigh, Intel’s Global Content and Media Strategist, is a triple threat in the content marketing industry: part content creator, part data analyst, and part distribution genius. He also happens to be one of the speakers at next week’s #ThinkContent Summit.

The Brand is not a strategy, but what you are. Brand starts in the recruitment process. Your people are your brand. Your Brand experience is defined in the moments customers interact with your own employees. Companies run by empathic communicative teams create the most enduring experiences. Your organizational culture is your destiny: how you treat your own employees shapes Brand experience. Companies that empower employees and create empathic cultures create positive experience. Toxic cultures produce toxic brand.

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

In Connection Economy everyone is a marketer by definition. Everyone has its own network (even TV network with the emergence of personal streaming app like Periscope) and talks about your brand every day. Your story, maybe built by your agency or related to your advertising, is just one of those stories about your brand, often the least important. Your company people are also marketer, often the most important one.

Learn how to create an effective content marketing strategy & how top companies are generating thousands of visitors from blogging & content.

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

According to Content Marketing Institute, only 35% of organizations have a documented content strategy. Out of those with a documented strategy, 60% say that their organization is effective versus 32% with only a verbal strategy and 7% for organizations with no content strategy.

Content is highly regarded in the consumer electronics industry where customers are seeking fresh, insightful information before making a big purchase.

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

Content is one of the most significant investments a company can make. While web design and vibrant videos are appealing, they don’t hold the same weight as content. This is especially true in the electronics industry, where customers are seeking fresh, insightful information before making a purchase.

Contributor Alex LePage tells the story of a furniture retailer that leveraged intent data to great benefit.

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

Marketing has always been about telling a great brand story and communicating it to the marketplace. But since the advent of data-driven programmatic (not to mention cross-screen) marketing, the complexity of getting that message out has increased exponentially.

What is the secret behind social media content marketing that takes content and publishes and promotes it on social networks including Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn? What are the 10 fundamental principles that will help make it effective?

My journey into content marketing actually started in 2004 when I left The Nielsen Company after nine years to work for a local firm. They hired me as their first VP of Marketing. My team of one (me) had absolutely zero budget to start.

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

How do you execute a marketing strategy for a company with no budget? The answer is what we now call content marketing.

Marketers have more data than ever at their fingertips, but that doesn't mean their jobs are any easier. Here are some of marketers' biggest challenges today.

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

When marketers aren't sure how to deliver the best results, or when they feel friction from other departments, their productivity and success rates go down. Here are five common challenges facing marketers today—and suggestions for overcoming them

Figure out how to be the most efficient, effective marketer you can be as just a one-man shop.

Fabrizio Faraco's insight:

To help you get on the path of agile marketing for your business, we’ve compiled eight incredibly important marketing activities that a one-man or one-woman team can and should execute that will also start moving key metrics. No more dilly dallying around with things that don’t move the needle.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.